How the internet made betting companies integrate into sports

Since Liechtenstein opened the world’s first online gambling venue in 1994, the revolution of online gambling has gone quite fast. Today most sports fans own a smartphone, which is connecting them to the internet most of the time. This has made betting activities available to sports fans at any time of the day, as long as you have a data connection.

Compared to the pre-internet age, modern sports are now an age of massive amounts of available information about sports. You can sit on the train on the way to work and look into different odds or betting tips. You can follow news on players’ shapes, injuries and even consider the weather forecast. You can even sit at the football stadium and check out the latest stats on the player running into the field after a substitute. Or you can place online bets on your smartphone, as you are watching a match. No matter if you sit on your couch, at a sports bar, at the stadium or somewhere else.

It’s also quite easy today, as betting sites have specialised in advising their users to make the best bets. At a site like Betting.com (https://betting.com/gb/odds) you can compare the odds of different bookmakers, find daily tips and guides on different betting strategies that can help players become more advanced in their betting approaches.

The betting market has become both an online and international phenomenon. Before the Liechtenstein International Lottery gave online access in 1994, all gambling activities were connected to a physical location. You had to walk to your local bookmaker in person and place your bet before the match would start at the football grounds. In multiple countries, this enabled national gambling companies to generate monopolies and keep the gambling market under strict control. With online betting, the market has become more liberalized and the different bookmakers can now compete on odds and bonuses for the players.

This has also increased the need for advertisement. The different bookmakers need publicity and the actors of sport are the perfect advertising pillars for the online bookmakers. In the 2000s global betting companies started to become sponsors of some of the biggest clubs in football. Global football brands like Real Madrid, A.C. Milan, Juventus and FC Bayern Munich helped to promote newly established bookmakers and bring the logos of the bookmakers into massive media coverage, when players like Filippo Inzaghi, Andrea Pirlo, Paolo Maldini, Christiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos showed up in TV, magazines and online publications.

Today betting companies are a central part of the modern football economy. Sponsorships from betting companies from all over the world are widespread in the Premier League, where almost all clubs are having an association with a betting brand and almost half of the clubs are having a betting company as the shirt sponsor.

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